Power of Choices and the Pursuit of Happiness

I should be writing now - research proposal, not a blogpost! But I guess writing my blog is still a somewhat better way of procrastination than spending hours on other social media. I was feeling little lost, restless and stressed lately. So, I wanted to pause for a bit and thought about the things that are unique about me, things that make me happy and help me convert my restlessness into positive energy. 

I'm trying to cut down my time on social media. I haven't used Facebook for a year (which feels great) and deleted the Twitter app from my phone. Instead I'm trying to read more - both academic and leisure reading. Also, since the rough summer is soon to be over, I'm trying to get back to my running habit. Still running indoors but soon I can run outside in the evening and breathe fresh air. I'm also trying to find some time to paint and planning on writing regular blogposts. Most importantly I want to live in the moment and feel happy in my heart. I realized that I'm constantly worrying about future and often forgetting to focus on the present. While planning for the future is definitely very important, overthinking is harmful. Soon I'll be introducing two TED talks that tell us about the importance of staying in the moment and the secret of happiness. 

As I was saying, emotional well-being is THE most important thing for any human being, yet so many people in this world are lacking it. Probably that's why pursuing happiness is such a hot research topic these days. Not that people didn't focus on happiness in the past, but the modern world is making it more complicated by adding millions of external factors. That's why I like reading about behavioral economics. It's very interesting to see how people make decisions and how external factors can cause bias in our decision making process without us even realizing. 

I've been reading the Art of Choosing book by Sheena Iyengar, who is a professor at Columbia University. By combining her personal life experiences with scientific experiments, the author shows us how the act of making choices can depend on different factors including the society we belong to and cultural background. I'll mention few of my favorite quotes from the book -

"Ask yourself: When making a choice, do you first and foremost consider what you want, what will make you happy, or do you consider what is best for you and the people around you. This seemingly simple question lies at the heart of major differences between cultures and individuals, both within and between nations."

Turns out those who grow up in Western society learn to prioritize themselves, whereas culturally the ones from Asia tend to consider other people's happiness more. Whichever route we choose, turns out theoretical formulas can't always be applied when it comes to personal happiness. The author mentioned about one of her colleagues who was offered a position at Harvard but Columbia then proposed three times higher salary to keep him. Both are great options, yet he had a difficult time making the decision even though he's an expert of telling people how to make choices. Also, pros vs cons approach isn't always helpful because it focuses on concrete, measurable criteria, often to the exclusion of emotional happiness. 

"Personal happiness is always a very serious matter. It's all well and good to propose formulas and strategies to other people, but we're not sure we should trust them when our own long-term happiness is clearly at stake." 

One of the important take-aways for me was to understand how the automatic and reflective system work in our brain (You can read this article on Of Two Minds When Making a Decision). In general the automatic system is always active in our subconscious mind but to we need to practice more to use our controlled system for making better and logical decisions. I like the lines below the most and probably should remind myself again and again when I'm upset with my own decisions.

"Near the end of Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss warns that we are sometimes our own opponents in the game of life. When we're struggling against temptation, or when we feel let down by our own decisions, we may wonder how we can possibly win against ourselves. It's enough to make us want to wave the white flag of surrender, but we have to resist the impulse."

I was watching few TED talks last night. The Surprising Science of Happiness is definitely one of the most interesting ones out there. The speaker wraps up with the core message that "our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience."

Another talk is Want to be Happier? Stay in the Moment where the speaker demonstrates study result that the ones who can focus on the present are the happier ones. Even though I think the study can be further elaborated by differentiating the activity types and the level of mental effort necessary. For example, he says that it's probably better to focus on your commute time even though it's one of the most annoying tasks to do but I think we also need to consider productivity and time.

In the end I'd say that defining happiness is both simple and difficult. We can't generalize and apply the same theory to everyone because every single person has his/her own definition of happiness (we can write a whole essay on those different criteria!). For me the most important thing is to figure out what makes me happy and share that with others through compassion and empathy. After all, if we can't assure personal happiness, it's almost impossible to make anyone else around us happy.